Kevin Feige Reveals How Far Ahead Marvel Studios Is Planning

We've known Marvel's long game - aka Phase 3 - for a couple years now. The phase that kicked off with this year's Captain America: Civil War will end with 2019's Avengers: Infinity War - Part 2, but we don't yet know of any films that will be produced after that. So just how far ahead is Marvel planning?

After Marvel Studios' panel at Comic Con on Saturday, Comicbook.com caught up with studio head Kevin Feige and asked about the future of Marvel post-Infinity War - and if that might mean the exit of longtime franchise stars like Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans. Here's what Feige had to say:

"You always look to the comic books, as we do, and you look at how rosters shift and rosters change and characters go away for a while and characters come back. I would guess that we would get to that soon. Luckily, we're years away from it. Everything that we're doing right now when we're not here getting ready for Comic-Con is focused on the nine movies that will be produced over the next three years and that takes up all of our time and all of our thoughts and all of those include all of those great actors you just mentioned and all of those characters. We always look at a horizon line that's usually about five years off. Sometimes, even that is sort of a pipe dream, sometimes it even goes beyond that. That's usually what we're looking at. Right now, we know through and have announced through 2019. We have ideas and pretty firm of where we're going in 2020. 2021, which still sounds like the crazy, far fetched future to me, but 2021 is still in flux through 2025."

So it sounds like 2020 is pretty much set in stone, but after that's things are up in the air. It's tough to predict what 2020's films will be, given that we won't know the state of the MCU following Ifinity War for another few years, but the most likely scenario would be sequels to some of Marvel's younger franchises. Doctor Strange premieres this year, followed by Spider-Man: Homecoming and Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2 next year. That means all three of these films will be due for a sequel around 2020. And then there's that long-delayed Inhumans film, as well as possible continuations of the Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor franchises. In other words, Marvel will have plenty to choose from in Phase Four.